Resistance exercise can provide many health and fitness benefits. Personal resistance exercise devices, including home gyms are plentiful in the consumer marketplace. However, there are many shortcomings that make personal resistance exercise devices inconvenient and cumbersome to use. Most personal exercise resistance devices employ either some form of weights or a resistance mechanism. Weights are inherently heavy, bulky, and are generally limited to use in a single location without some cumbersome transportation to another location.
Resistance mechanisms vary widely in type, complexity, and usability. Many incorporate extensible springs, flexible rods, extensible bands, or the like. These mechanisms may be lighter weight but are often complex and may still be bulky or not well adapted to movement between locations. Additionally, resistance mechanisms often resume a neutral state when placed in a normal or un-actuated position. Thus, when employed in an exercise movement, the amount of resistance provided thereby may start at zero, or be very low through an initial portion of a range of motion of the exercise, thus the user may be unable to get the full benefit of the resistance throughout the entire range of motion of the exercise. Or the user may be required to physically preload the resistance mechanism to achieve an initial resistance, which is cumbersome and may incur additional physical efforts and time. Devices that are configured to provide the desired resistance throughout the range of motion of the exercise may be difficult to manufacture and configure in a preloaded state.